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Major Mite: 1922

December 7, 1922. Washington, D.C. "Two in one. The smallest midget and smallest 'camel' shriner in existence. Maj. Mite had to skirt the camera left carelessly by a photographer when leaving the White House." Clarence Chesterfield Howerton (1913-1975), a.k.a. "Major Mite," was 9 years old when this photo was taken. According to his obituary he was in the "Our Gang" movies and played a Munchkin in "The Wizard of Oz." National Photo Co. View full size.

He played one of the baby Munchkins. He pops up out of an egg wearing pink and rubbing his eyes while they are singing Ding Dong the Witch is dead. He looks cute in this pic, but in Wizard and Our Gang, he is quite homely!

The Our Gang series short that starred Major Mite (as a very creepy looking "baby", with a very deep voice dubbed over his) also had the distinction of being the debut of young George "Spanky" McFarland, the only child of the dozens hired by Hal Roach to be billed separately.

Although Free Eats is the only film listed on Imdb as having starred Major Mite, I saw him on another short, quite a few years ago. As in Free Eats, he made odd pauses in speaking that I thought were kind of interesting.

The Our Gang episode has the gang as charity guests at the home of some wealthy patron. He played one of the two dwarfs pretending to be babies so they could get picked up by the wealthy attendees and grab jewelry. He stayed in a carriage. They are caught when Stymie catches him smoking a cigar and says, "They're not babies. They're fidgets!"

Shorpy.com | History in HD is a vintage photo archive featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1960s. (Available as fine-art prints from the Shorpy Archive.) The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.